


in the room where you sleep

by blurhawaii



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Demonic Possession, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-03
Updated: 2017-12-03
Packaged: 2019-02-10 03:12:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12902712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blurhawaii/pseuds/blurhawaii
Summary: Hunched over on himself on the bottom step of the staircase, Ryan throws out the term ‘tulpa’ for the camera and then has to backtrack when Shane cuts in,wait, wait, wait, just a second here, a what?A tulpa, Ryan explains in the thoughtfully stressed voice he uses to info-dump, is a Tibetan concept where a thought or an object has been manifested through an intense focus of spiritual or mental energy.The idea is simply that if enough people believe this house has the ability to swallow them whole then, unknowingly, they might have given life to the very concept itself.





	in the room where you sleep

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vissy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vissy/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, vissy, I hope this pleases you.
> 
> This fic is very much inspired by Mark Z. Danielewski's book 'House of Leaves.'

Ryan has taken to repeating his mantra as they walk. A warm puff of air drawn from his core that visibly fights off the chill of the hallway. _Do not be afraid, do not be afraid, do not be afraid_ , but when the hallway echoes it back, _be afraid, be afraid, be afraid_ , it’s Shane who stumbles and shudders because, in a way, it’s Shane who has it worse off here.

While it’s easy to feed off of the beliefs of a believer, it’s another thing entirely to do the same of a skeptic. And this house, with it’s complexity of turns juxtaposed against it’s idea of progress, which is made up of parallel lines e.g. always travelling, never meeting an end, it seems that this house has actually gone and achieved the impossible. It’s shaken him.

Ryan functions in stages, bursts of strength equalled by bouts of panic, but it’s Shane, with his one foot in front of the other attitude, who’s taking each and every endless corner to heart. The betrayals of the house, of science, of his very nature stacking on top of each other, multiplying, towering, until eventually it will grow too unsteady in him to exist at all.

And then what? Parallel lines, one can’t exist without the other to balance it out. If one goes...and then what?

“Do you think we should turn back?” Ryan asks, pointing his flashlight first behind them and then ahead before correcting himself. “Or, I mean, we could try going in reverse? Like actually walking backwards or something?”

The hallway stretches on further than their lights can reach and it’s a triumph of sorts to at least understand that back is no longer an option for them. Back implies that if they retrace their steps, following the path Shane has led them with his one hand glued to the wall, that the path they’re met with will be the same one they just travelled. But it won’t be.

“I don’t think it matters,” Shane says, like he’s been saying all along, and he turns to center the handheld camera on Ryan, a privilege that Ryan has wordlessly gifted him because he’s used to looking freaked out on film, that’s how they earn a living honestly, and it’s the very least he can do to spare Shane the same indignity when it really matters.

“One way is just as good as the other in here, in that they’re all completely fucked,” Shane goes on to say, in that same defeated voice anyone would use when they know they’re being tricked and can’t do anything about it. “But, hey, at least we’re getting a cool video out of it.”

Framed the way he is on the tiny viewscreen, two solid walls on either side, floor and ceiling, with an infinite darkness behind him, Ryan looks every bit the trapped rats that they are, but with his arms crossed over his chest he appears solid too. An immovable object who rolls his eyes and glares down the lense. “Yeah,” he says, “a video that everyone and their mother is going to take one look at and go ‘that’s fake’, ‘clearly photoshopped.’”

The image of Ryan shakes like an earthquake, cradled between Shane’s hands. It would be eerie if it wasn’t just Shane laughing. “I can see the strings and everything,” he adds, playing along. “Totally fake. What a couple of sell-outs, that’s what they’ll call us, Ryan.”

Their shared laughter comes like a punch of heat. A single gunslinger against a whole army as the house seems to breathe back around them.

When they had first arrived here, it had felt the same as any location they’d been before. Until it suddenly didn’t.

The house had been the same. Until it suddenly wasn’t.

Shane swings the camera around at the same time they both stop laughing. There’s a strange displacement of air that’s paired with the stark reveal of a new path before them. A right turn where there was a straight hallway just moments before.

_Do not be afraid, do not be afraid, do not--_

“Oh, fuck this place,” Ryan breathes, and there’s that onset of panic, punching in it’s time-card, as punctual as always. “Real talk, though. Can hearts actually explode? Because I feel like people aren’t supposed to be this scared for this long.”

Shane takes a step and then takes another. His flashlight cuts around the corner and racks up yet another impossible thing before breakfast. “See,” he says, peering down a stretch of dark that looks eerily familiar, simply by the fact that there’s nothing that stands out, “normally I’d mock you for saying something like that, but in this place, I don’t even know anymore. Probably not?”

There’s something about being lost, Ryan has found, that translates well into an urge to reach out, to grab anything warm and hold on tight. But that’s another thing about parallel lines he’s just as quick to remember, they can never intersect.

“That’s reassuring,” Ryan says instead, because he can’t reach out, can only keep moving on. Like them’s the breaks, kid, and you better get used to it. But Ryan doesn’t want to get used to it.

It should feel like a victory, this place, a middle finger to anyone who’s ever doubted him, Shane included, but it mostly feels like they’ve willingly stepped into hell.

And then decided to film it.

_\--be afraid_

 

 

Hunched over on himself on the bottom step of the staircase, Ryan throws out the term ‘tulpa’ for the camera and then has to backtrack when Shane cuts in, _wait, wait, wait, just a second here, a what?_ They’re only interested in the audio so Shane hunkers down opposite, folding up his long legs like a kid waiting on a story. 

A tulpa, Ryan explains in the thoughtfully stressed voice he uses to info-dump, is a Tibetan concept where a thought or an object has been manifested through an intense focus of spiritual or mental energy. Western occultists have since adopted the practise as a means of astral projection but Ryan can see Shane winding up a verbal punch at that mention and he quickly steers his point back to the house. The idea is simply that if enough people believe this house has the ability to swallow them whole then, unknowingly, they might have given life to the very concept itself.

“That’s dumb,” Shane says.

“I’ll admit, it’s a little out there. But I’m not talking about--”

But Shane isn’t done. “If every little thing people believed in came true then we would have concrete proof of ghosts by now. They’d be everywhere. You, alone, could have generated enough energy to manifest so much weird shit for us to catch on film.”

“Have you honestly never been thinking about someone, just one day, and then have them call you up, totally out of the blue? It’s the same kind of thing, just to a lesser degree.”

“That’s what most people would call a coincidence, Ryan. The world is a big place, sometimes things just overlap. Doesn’t mean that magical energy played any part in it.”

“What was it, like 4? 4% of Americans believe we’re secretly being taken over by lizard people? That’s a lot of people, man. Think maybe they manifested that one into being true?”

“It’s a scary thought, I’ll give you that.”

The camera rests on the floor between them, lense pointing through the open doorway leading to the main room. As a location that’s thought to possess so much sinister energy, it mostly manages to give off the impression of a beloved family home, warm and well lived in.

In retrospect, the static shot of their sleeping bags lined up in a row on the floor could be seen as foreboding. Like cadavers on the slab, cold and still.

In retrospect.

 

 

Like all good days, it ends. But the house lights are all still on when Shane makes a low noise in the back of his throat and then begins to windmill his legs in an attempt to climb out of his sleeping bag. Ryan goes from half asleep, staring through the phone he has propped up against his chest, to wide awake and wide eyed in an instant.

Once free, Shane pads across the room and, with a show of careful concentration, backs himself into the corner, placing his feet heel to toe flush against the wall. He starts towards the center of the room, counting every length of his foot until his path brings him in line with Ryan’s legs and it’s there that he’s forced to stop and look over, meeting Ryan’s stare.

“You said this place changes shape, right?” he explains, one foot stalled in the air. “That it gets bigger, adds rooms that shouldn’t exist, stuff like that. Well, how are we supposed to know if that’s true if we don’t know how big a room is to begin with?”

Ryan deflates. His back hits the ground hard enough to hurt and he even goes so far as to throw his forearm across his eyes like he’s in real emotional distress. “Oh, fuck me,” he says. “I didn’t know what was happening. I thought you’d been possessed or something. Jesus Christ! Fine. Okay. Go back and start over. Let me get this on camera at least.”

So Shane goes back and Ryan pulls his knees to his chest and together they map the room.

This time Shane counts out loud. He goes from one pastel coloured corner to the other while Ryan tracks his progress. The slow drag of the camera gives an uninterrupted view of the room for the first time and shows door to opposing door, passing over a declining row of family pictures and a bookshelf crammed full with books along the way.

“If this is the scientific method at work here,” Ryan says from his place on the floor, half muffled through a yawn, “then I’ve gotta say I’m unimpressed. This is some low budget nonsense happening right now.”

“Hey,” Shane says, without turning around, “if I can’t trust my own two feet then who can I trust?”

On camera, a hand pushes into frame, middle finger raised to Shane’s roaming back, and it’s on that image that the footage cuts away--

 

Whoever it is editing this footage together does so with a firm grasp on dramatic irony.

 

\--and comes back to an obscured view of the floor and Ryan’s panicked voice saying, “No, no, no, fuck that and fuck this whole thing. Shane, we need to leave. Right now!”

“Uhhh,” Shane says, and it becomes clear that he’s the one fumbling the camera. He brings it up just enough that it’s now a close up view of Ryan’s chest and doesn’t say much more.

“I’m out,” Ryan says, his voice becoming more and more shrill. “I’m out, alright. This is too much for me, man.” Despite this, he doesn’t move, he just folds and unfolds his arms while the camera refuses to look away.

Shane’s voice when it comes again is calm to the point of lethargy, like he’s choosing his words too deliberately to keep up much of a rhythm. A man who’s all too used to talking someone down from the edge. “I don’t know, Ryan. Isn’t this what we wanted? Isn’t this the whole reason we came here? To, you know, see weird shit?”

“Oh shit, do you think we did this? Do you think we, like, manifested this?”

“I think,” Shane says, slow and careful, “that it’s possible we missed something earlier. Here,” he adds, “hold this. Let me measure the room again.”

The camera passes hands, sending the world off kilter for a second, but when it straightens up Ryan has it pointed at a door. A plain wooden door that stands between a row of family pictures and a bookshelf. And there it stays. In the background, Shane can be heard counting. He briefly crosses the camera's view, eclipsing the doorway, but continues across the room with an accompanying thought that Ryan knows is dumb but thinks anyway, _unharmed_. Shane reaches the opposite corner of the room with a soft, _oh, it’s the same_ , and finally the camera swings his way, just in time to catch the way he takes several retreating steps away from the direction of the door, an almost stricken look on his face.

“Nope,” Ryan says, firmer than ever. “Are you fucking kidding me? How can it possibly be the same when there’s a fucking door where there wasn’t one last night?”

“I-I don’t know,” Shane says.

By all logic, this new door should open up onto the north side of the house, straight onto the well-kept lawn facing the street. But even without sharing the thought they both know it won’t. Shane drifts back over and he lifts his hands, intending to take the camera back, but Ryan’s generosity with it doesn’t come until much later and he clutches it to his chest like a shield between him and the door.

“Well, we have to open it, right?” Shane says, strangely bereft but like it’s the obvious choice and the camera pitches left and right in response.

“Do we?” Ryan says, “Do we, really? Because I vote that we pack up our shit and get the hell out of here, personally.”

“What kind of paranormal investigators would we be then, Ryan? They’d ask for our badges back.”

Now there’s being brave, Ryan notes, and there’s being suicidal. When he started this show he swore to always keep on one side of this very thin line, but Shane--Shane likes to cross the border so often he’d surely qualify for a dual citizenship at this point. The guy likes to tempt fate and, even now, when the threat in front of them appears to be so very real and tangible, here he is, moving closer to the door with his hand outstretched.

The panic hits Ryan square in the chest but by then it’s too late.

When the door swings open, it does so without a sound.

Staring down the dark length of hallway it reveals, the one that shouldn’t exist, by all rights can’t exist, it comes with an overwhelming sense of vertigo. Like taking a sip from a coffee cup only to discover it’s water instead. It’s that kind of feeling. A mental misstep that doesn’t seem to clear away even after Shane slams the door shut on reflex, cutting off the view.

“Huh?” Shane says, in the ringing silence, “well that’s not right,” and, again, the camera cuts there.

 

 

If he stares for long enough, without blinking or shifting his head, Ryan swears he can make out faces in the empty space above him. He also knows that there’s a name for that, that exact paranoia, and he itches for the weight of the camera in his hands so that he can point it straight up and close his eyes in its stead. But Shane had made a face when he’d asked for it earlier, so he stopped asking after that.

“You need to sleep, Ryan,” Shane says, close enough at his side that the plosive reaches him like a physical touch.

“I don’t think I can.”

There’s a long pause and then, with a hint of reluctance, Shane asks, “Do you want the wall?”

Lying on his back in what feels like an untethered boat on an ocean made up of ink, Ryan thinks about it. He has his jacket balled up under his head and his flashlight tucked under his chin, ready to go. He can’t see anything for sure but every time he breathes out he can feel the coarse denim of Shane’s jacket brush against his bare arm and it’s a feeling akin to biting down on foil.

Ryan feels raw. Oversensitive. Like he’s spent the day being dashed against the rocks, parts of him just eroding away. The thought of trying to sleep with a wall at his back, boxing him in, makes him itch. The thought of having that same wall literally creep away from him in the night makes him want to cry.

“No,” Ryan says at last, he doesn’t want the wall. He wants to go home. He wants to know if that’s even a possibility anymore. He just wants. He takes a deliberate grounding breath and feels it catch in his throat, achieving the opposite. “What if we never get out of here?” he whispers instead, into the dark. “Shane, what if we’re stuck in here forever?”

As a kid, Ryan used to sleep with his curtains open, used to cry and beg that they stay open all through the night even after he had nightmares of faces peering in. To him, the threat of _what could be_ was always so much worse than the reality. With the curtains closed, anything could be waiting on the other side.

“Ryan--” Shane starts, sensing a shift, and his hand closes carefully around Ryan’s arm, right where the sleeve ends and his skin begins.

There’s a hand touching him in the dark and Ryan flinches. Hears the blood rushing in his ears. Feels a weight pushing down on his chest and all that jazz. “Ah, shit,” he wheezes, “that’s worse. That’s so much worse.”

Sitting up dislodges the pressure on his ribs, which turns out to be the flashlight rolling away, but the surrounding darkness disorientates the simple reassurance of seeing your own hands in front of your face. Ryan’s aware he’s in the midst of a panic attack but he can’t _see_ it and Shane’s touch is just yet another reminder of how totally blind they are in here.

His fingers scratch at the floorboards as he tries to find his flashlight. The curtains are drawn tight over his eyes now and every second that passes has the hypothetical thing in the dark creeping closer. He’s hyperventilating by the time a bright light explodes at his side and all of a sudden their shadows are thrown high up on the wall, looking stretched out and inhuman.

The light reveals Shane who has his own flashlight clutched in both hands, aimed low to the ground, but they're both squinting into the bright as it struggles to fill the whole room. It doesn’t come close to managing it and they couldn’t have picked a worse room to bed down in, honestly. The ceiling is cavernous, dragging every noise they make into its grasp and twisting them into things that come back sounding different and all the more threatening. Ryan keeps hearing voices that aren’t their own and the strain of trying to pick out words is killing him.

“You need to calm down,” Shane says, “seriously, man, or you’re gonna pass out,” and he’s breathing pretty hard himself. There’s a sharpness to his voice that Ryan’s not used to hearing. So not used to, in fact, that it takes a second to place what it is.

It’s fear. Shane’s scared. And that thought, alone, is more than enough to sober Ryan up.

When he looks over Shane’s got his back pressed up against the wall and Ryan recalls his earlier offer to swap places and recognises it for what it was, what it really meant that Shane would offer it at all, his own weak hold on feelings of safety, and he flushes with a protective streak for the guy that he’s so not used to feeling in these kinds of situations. It fuels a stint at bravery which he intends to ride for as long as he can. He glances around and spots his flashlight where it’s rolled a few feet out and he crawls for it, on hands and knees, scuttling back when he has it, snatching up his jacket as he goes. 

“Look,” Ryan says, breathless and dizzy for it, blaming that for the reason he gets too close and how he drops his hand briefly down on top of Shane’s when he’s looking for a place to settle. Shane’s hand on the small of his back guides him gently to a spot that’s not on top of him but close enough that it might as well be and they don’t talk about it, not at all. “This sleeping thing is not happening,” Ryan continues, “not for me, anyway. But you’re right, and if you think you can sleep, you should go ahead and do it, man, but I can’t.”

“Right,” Shane says, and he thumps his head back against the wall. His eyes flutter closed and maybe it’s just the spooky campfire lighting but he looks wrecked. “I’ll sleep and you can stay awake all night, working yourself into a frenzy. That’s fair.”

“Hey, no, that’s not what I meant. It’s just--this is usually the point in the night where I bail, you know. Say ‘fuck you’ to the demon or whatever and get the hell out of here.”

“Can’t really do that here,” Shane confirms softly but with a kind of pointed regret that bleeds into them both.

“No,” Ryan says, “no we can’t. But I could, I don’t know, keep lookout or something. While you sleep. If you want.”

Shane rolls his head towards him and the shadows follow. They’re less pronounced now or Shane’s more relaxed, either way he smiles kind of goofy and says, “We can take turns.”

Ryan nods. “Yeah, sure, whatever.” He has no plans to sleep but that’s not the point. They don’t even know for certain what time of day it is in here, what with the lack of windows, but darkness is darkness and it likes to trick the brain. He’s tired but he’ll be damned if he lets himself give into it.

He’s not expecting the hand that flattens against his shoulder blade but he doesn’t flinch as it urges him forward. Once Ryan is far enough away from the wall, Shane slides down sideways to pillow his head on his arm. He’s wedged himself between Ryan and the wall and his flat stomach is behind Ryan’s back. Ryan can feel a bony hipbone digging into his spine and it’s reassuring in a way that doesn’t make him feel like he’s drowning. It’s weird though, they don’t usually touch this much and, in that moment, everything Ryan has ever held true about parallel lines gets thrown right out of his head because they’re certainly intersecting now, him and Shane, tangling together in a way that Ryan is not willing to give up now that he has it.

“Uh, do you want a pillow?” He holds out his jacket, arm straight and awkward, and at least like this they don’t have to look each other in the eye.

Shane laughs, inescapably fond. “Nah,” he says, “I’m good.” After a pause, he adds, “I feel safer already, Ryan.”

And Ryan sits up just that little bit straighter backed, feeling that laugh travel through his back and settle, warm, in his chest. “Damn right you do,” he says, “now go to sleep.”

He thinks that’s it at that point, like maybe he’ll be allowed to get away with it and no one will mention it, but Shane clears his throat and taps his finger against the flashlight he has in his hands, the one that’s still shining bright and hopeful.

“Batteries,” he says in the way of an apology, “we don’t have a lot of them.”

“Yeah,” Ryan hears himself say, “yeah, I know that.”

They each have a couple of spares rattling around in their pockets for emergencies, maglites aren’t known for their reliability after all, but once they’re gone that’s really it. There’s an expiration date on the things keeping them alive in here and, funnily enough, that includes Ryan’s bravery. They can only hope that their situation changes before that time comes, before he’s been bled dry. Because fuck if it doesn’t.

“I’m sorry,” Shane says like it’s a warning and then with a finite click the darkness is back.

It envelops them so suddenly it’s as if the light never existed but Ryan digs down deep into his meagre bag of courage and settles in for the long, dark wait.

 

 

The arrow comes out looking a little lopsided, with one side of the pointed head trailing on longer than the other. But he’s working with imprecise tools so Shane’s as satisfied as he can be when he takes a step back to admire his work. He blows away the excess plaster dust, tilting his head in consideration, and goes back in to neaten up a line, scratching at the wall using the metal button on the cuff of his sleeve, pulled taut over the ends of his fingers. It’s not a masterpiece, he accepts in the end, but it gets the job done.

“Talk to me, tell me about this place,” Shane says, and he claps his dusty hands in the air and flinches when the sharp noise comes back as a scream, sharper still. With his head ducked down low between his shoulders, he’s a booted dog, and he steps off in the direction he’s pointed them. But not before he takes the camera back from Ryan’s hold.

During the sheepish exchange, Shane makes a conscious effort not to touch him and it’s been that way since he woke up, curled tight around Ryan’s back, and they don’t say a word about that either, not at all.

“Tell you what,” Ryan sighs, tired in more ways than one, “I know as much about this place as you do, which is nothing.” He steps carefully around Shane with his single beam of light to guide the way and walks just for the sake of walking.

“You’re the one who researches these places,” Shane says, “I just show up on the day. For the show, Ryan, what were you going to talk about?”

And that makes Ryan stop in his tracks. Shane only avoids colliding with his back because he’s given up on pretending he hasn’t been watching Ryan closely ever since he woke up, well rested and safe, in total contrast with Ryan’s wired expression and bruised eyes. Ryan could blame the camera, tracking his every move, but he’s felt the weight of eyes on him since the moment they stepped into this place, and it’s only now that Shane doesn’t look away after he’s been caught, that Ryan gets it. It’s like Shane doesn’t quite believe the person he’s seeing and there’s a possibility that if he blinks or turns away for too long, this new Ryan would be gone.

Ryan doesn’t appreciate the idea that he’s intangible anymore than he likes the idea that Shane won’t just touch him to prove to them both that he’s not. But then he remembers the show, he remembers Shane’s iron grip on the camera, and he remembers the role he usually plays and it all makes sense.

When they finally make it out of here, Ryan thinks to himself, it’s going to be the most fucked up video they’ve ever made.

He turns, making a grab for Shane’s arm, because screw the protocol of the show...and misses, dragging his hand through empty space and not the denim that he expects. “Wha--,” he starts to say, but he gets cut off when something hits him in the chest and long fingers move up to catch him under the chin. “Ah, okay, okay,” he says, reaching up for the flailing hand before it can scratch him. He closes it up in his own as it clutches onto the woolen collar of his jacket.

“Sorry,” Shane is saying the whole time. “Sorry, I don’t know why I did that. I thought--I don’t know what I thought actually. I think I might have panicked for a second there.”

Ryan laughs but it’s not funny. It’s kind of terrifying really but there’s no way he’s telling Shane that. “That’s okay, man,” he says, “happens to the best of us. You’re allowed one freak out, god knows I’ve had enough over the years.” The hand under his tightens, pulling him down slightly, and Ryan has no choice but to go with it.

“I hate this place,” Shane says. “I keep expecting to be somewhere else but I blink and we’re still here. And it cheats. It fucking cheats, Ryan. How are we supposed to beat this when it doesn’t make any sense?”

“Hey,” Ryan says, and he doesn’t know what to do with rational thought, except spread it around apparently, “I’m still here, alright. I’m with you. We’re gonna be fine.”

“You can’t know that,” Shane says, never usually the guy a glass half empty.

“I can believe it,” Ryan says. “Will it into being true, mass influence and all that--” He stops himself there, so damn forcefully that he bites down on his tongue hard. “Oh shit, that’s it.”

He peels Shane’s hand from his collar because it’s making it hard to think. He threads their fingers together before Shane can even think about pulling away fully. Ryan’s brain is going at lightspeed, too fast for him to take note of the way Shane sweeps his thumb over his knuckles in acceptance but it gets tucked away for later.

“Think about how we got here in the first place. We spent the entire night talking about extra rooms and doorways to nowhere. We made this happen, Shane. It’s a tulpa, for fuck’s sake, I said this.” With their hands clasped, Ryan has to gesture with the hand holding the flashlight and it’s to limited success.

“That’s one way to look at it, sure,” Shane says, and it comes out distracted as he’s blinking light out of his eyes. He hasn’t got a hand to spare either.

“No, this is it. It makes total sense.” He hears a voice, not his own, repeat those words back to him, _total sense_ , and he meets Shane’s raised eyebrow with a shrug. “A kind of sense then,” he allows quieter, “it makes a kind of sense, alright.”

“So, if I’ve got this right, you’re saying all we need to do is think real hard about an exit? Because I’ve got news for you, Ryan, that’s all I’ve been doing.”

“True. That’s very true but--”

His voice gets drowned out by a low rumbling and it takes a moment for them to register that it’s not just the echo they’ve gotten used to hearing. It’s not mimicking them for a start. It’s a sound all of it’s own and it’s rolling down the hallway towards them. That ebbing kind of flow that comes right before the destructive force of a tidal wave that follows.

“What the hell was that?” Shane asks, and he tears his hand from Ryan’s grip to better angle the camera towards the noise.

 _There’s a thing in the dark_ is what Ryan thought to himself all last night, and so it seems the house has provided. There’s a thing in the dark, alright, and it’s all Ryan’s fault.

His flashlight flickers. The worst possible moment but Ryan reads it as karma, expected and deserved. He beats it against his hand anyway but it still splutters and dies. The sound comes again, a growl that could be animalistic if he believed anything could actually survive in this place and, in the dark, it’s easy to imagine the sheer mass of the thing right in front of them. Whatever it is.

“Ignore it,” he says and he feels the air next to him shift.

“Are you crazy? We should move, right?”

“Just ignore it,” Ryan repeats and he gets an annoyed huff in response.

“I’m not playing peekaboo with a monster, Ryan. It doesn’t just stop existing if we pretend it’s not there.”

“In this place,” Ryan says, as factual as he dares, “it does.”

Ryan finds the seam on his flashlight by touch and twists. He doesn’t catch the batteries that slide out on purpose and the sound they make hitting the floor and rolling away makes Shane curse under his breath. But Shane doesn’t move, doesn’t run away, and he’s listening to Ryan for once, deferring to him in a way that makes Ryan feel even more guilty.

He fishes for the spare batteries he has in his pocket and takes his time feeling out the positive ends. Once they’re in, he screws the end back on and breathes. He doesn’t switch it on yet.

“Okay,” Ryan says, and he has to raise his voice to be heard over the rumbling. “I’m going to touch you so don’t freak out. If you freak out then I’m gonna start freaking out. So, you know, don’t.” He gets a fistful of denim somewhere near Shane’s hip and tugs. “We’re going to turn around, alright, and calmly walk this way.”

“This is how people die in horror movies,” Shane says, plaintive, but he allows himself to be pulled and directed all the same.

They start walking and, if anything, the noise gets louder. It’s close enough now that it’s almost too hard to ignore. It’s breathing down their necks, only without the heat and the forceful rush of air.

“Keep the camera pointing back,” Ryan says, “if that helps.”

Shane clears his throat and says, “But there’s nothing there, right?” and Ryan feels lightheaded with the relief of it.

They’ve both got the curtains thrown wide open now and he’s right, there’s nothing there.

Ryan tucks the flashlight halfway up his sleeve before he turns it on. The light comes out in a muted cone and it passes over a part of the wall that reacts different from the rest. It’s a darker patch in a sea of grey and when a trailing line jumps out from the rest Ryan realises, with a touch of surprise, that it’s the carved arrow from earlier, now urging them to turn around and walk deeper into the thing’s waiting mouth.

It’s the first time in days that a step backwards hasn’t also been a misstep forward and that has to be progress of a kind.

Ryan is just about to point it out when he feels Shane flinch under his hand and stop dead.

“Fuck,” Shane says, and he’s twisting in on himself in panic, all six foot something of him, but there’s something holding him in place, something that has nothing to do with Ryan’s hand still twisted up in his jacket.

“What?” Ryan asks. “What’s happening?” and he’s patting Shane down, just as frantic, but he can’t seem to find anything that would cause Shane to make a noise quite like that.

Not until, that is, Shane shudders and forces out between gritted teeth, “It’s biting me. I can feel it’s teeth in my shoulder, Ryan. What the fuck?”

Ryan immediately sweeps his hand up Shane’s back and tries not to think too deeply about what he’s likely to find. There’s enough adrenaline coursing through him that he’s prepared to fight whatever it is, punch it dead-on like he would a shark and weather the consequences.

But he finds nothing. No beastly head, no sharp teeth, nothing. Just Shane’s shoulder, right before it jumps out of reach of his probing fingers. “There’s nothing there, Shane,” he says, and he means it as reassurance but it gets lost somewhere in the dark. “I can’t feel anything.”

“Well, I can,” Shane says, short and sharp, his voice tight with pain. “Jesus Christ, this hurts.”

The growling stops, right at that moment, and they both seem to realise it at the same time. And it’s either busy right now, with it’s mouth full, or simple acknowledgment is all it was really after. Ryan reaches up as soon as Shane sags under the release of pressure and this time he finds the denim tacky and wet to the touch. When he brings the flashlight up, it’s red with blood.

_Do not be afraid, do not be afraid, do not be afraid._

And it’s all well and good but that was so much easier to believe when there was nothing to be afraid of.

 

 

Hopes of finding another room to sleep in fall away like drips in the rain when all they come across for the next few hours are continuous right turns that should send them spiraling, mentally if not just physically. It could be that Ryan’s reluctance to stop moving is acting like a signal to the house, generous as it pretends to be, and he’s actually right where his subconscious wants him. But the damn hallway scares him just as much as anything else in here and his subconscious knows this.

 _Hallways are a lot like highways for the supernatural_ , Ryan says out loud at one point, instead of just in his head, _even spirits are self-deluded enough to think they’ve got places to be._ To be fair, he adds when Shane gives him a certain look, he hasn’t eaten in two days and he’s been awake for close to three.

But Shane does stop him eventually. Pulls him aside gently as though they’re letting an invisible someone pass by and then drags him down into a crouch, all without saying a word that Ryan could argue against.

The ground is just as hard and unforgiving as he remembers and Ryan watches, unsurprised, as Shane shuffles around until his back is pressed to the wall. His eyes invariably get drawn to the mottled red and blue denim at his side, a weird shock of colour where it’s been lacking in everything else. He can smell the blood now that it’s dried and he worries if he’s the only one who can.

He’s already tried to rip a makeshift bandage from the hem of his shirt but it turns out it’s a lot harder than it looks in the movies. Shane had smiled at his attempts, laughed until the movement jarred his shoulder and the hiss of pain he couldn’t stop in time had Ryan turning pale in empathy.

“You know,” Shane says now, holding the front of his jacket closed with one hand while the other gets stuffed into the crease behind his knee, “it wouldn’t be so bad in here if it wasn’t so goddamn cold.”

“You’re kidding, right?” 

Shane starts to shrug, then thinks better of it. “Eh, it’s possible that’s the blood loss talking.”

Ryan laughs and it twists into a groan when his brain catches up with the fact that it’s so not funny. “Shit,” he says. “Shane, I’m sorry. This is all my fault.”

And it is. The monster’s only here because Ryan dreamt it was. And the dizzying path that they’re currently stuck on is only unfurling before their feet because he’s afraid of what might happen once they stop. He’s scared of what he might accidentally conjure up to hurt them and, while he’s been thinking about a way out ever since he made the connection, intrusive thoughts have always had a bad habit of tripping him up.

Shane sighs and, like every other time they stop, he reaches out. He raps the knuckles of his uninjured arm against Ryan’s chest. Three off-tempo taps before he stills and then they’re just touching. “Geez, you’re warm,” he says in what sounds like breathless wonder and the tap turns into five long fingers held flat. “How the hell are you so warm?”

Ryan feels hot all over to tell the truth. It might be the lack of sleep creeping up on him but his head is swimming in it, the heat, and it’s starting to bleed down his neck like a scalding shower. It hits him all at once that he’s _too hot_ and he peels his jacket down his arms looking like a man trying to escape the clutch of a straightjacket.

He doesn’t get very long to enjoy the cool air because he hears a muttered, _come here_ , and then he’s being dragged to Shane’s chest and held there. It’s awkward and he’s holding himself up with a hand planted between Shane’s thighs and all he’s able to fully process is the textures. The rough and smooth of Shane’s jacket and shirt versus the sticky slide of his overly warm forehead against Shane’s cold neck. Neither of which texture feels like much compared to when Shane breathes out and Ryan can feel it cool against the base of his skull; it might as well be a ghostly touch for all the sense that it makes.

“Uh, Shane,” Ryan says, and he doesn’t dare move in fear of making it worse, “you maybe wanna lighten up a bit? Maybe let me--” The next empty exhale ends with lips brushing his skin and Ryan shudders, instantly forgetting what he was in the middle of saying.

“It’s really cold, okay,” Shane says and the movement constitutes a kiss, technically.

If it’s not a kiss, the next brush of lips definitely is. And the next. And then Ryan’s being pushed away and everything is tilting.

Ryan finds himself on his back, staring up at a dark ceiling made up of faces, without a clear idea of how he got there. Only that he’s somewhat thankful Shane had the forethought to cup the back of his head on the way down because the floor bleeds a chilling path up his feverish spine that stops there, at the grip of fingers in his hair. It turns out to be a bad, bad thing when Shane follows him down and the hand in his hair makes Ryan feel malleable and all too willing to accept that this is something that they do now.

Ryan remembers a time when he wanted this, however brief, and closes his eyes in the magnitude of it. What was once a small thread had been tugged at, a little at a time, until the whole thing had unravelled spectacularly and left him here like this, sprawled out under the weight of his best friend. Feeling something he probably shouldn’t.

He’s vaguely aware that the camera is still rolling somewhere out there in reality and it can probably pick up the hitch in his breath when the next kiss that gets tucked into his neck turns into a nip of teeth. Ryan kicks out on the off chance that the camera is in his reach but all it does is create a wave in his body that Shane rides up and down before settling even closer.

Shane’s hands ghost down his face, thumbs landing in the hollow of Ryan’s neck while his mouth moves up. There’s a clear destination in mind but he’s taking his time getting there, like there are fragments of Shane still in play here and it just so happens to be the parts that enjoy teasing him. Ryan could groan at how helpless he feels but it would be like giving out the wrong impression and all he can do is lift his chin up and away long enough to say, “Alright, big guy, you need to get off now. This isn’t you.”

It’s the house, he doesn’t say, taking something good and twisting it.

“I thought,” Shane says, ignoring him in favour of sliding his cold hands down Ryan's chest, “of another way to get out of here.” There’s a chill in everything he does; in his touch, in his words, in the way he bypasses Ryan’s mouth completely to whisper, _permanently_ , into the shell of his ear as though he’s trying so hard not to let the house in on the secret.

And with that idea offered on a string, Shane pulls away. He sits back and Ryan is still pinned between the bracket of his knees around his hips. It's a seductive position, designed to drive home just how far Ryan had let his mind wander in here, and how he's the only one to blame that it's all coming back to haunt them. But the weight is off of his chest now, literally if not figuratively, and he’s able to suck in great big lungfuls of air that chafe his throat on the way down.

The combined wattage of their flashlights is lighting Shane up from behind, creating a halo effect that’s ironic given the circumstances, but it’s also keeping Shane’s face mostly hidden in the dark. It's better this way, he thinks, that he can't see his own misguided lust being reflected back at him. Better still, that he can't see the disgust either. There’s just enough light framing them for Ryan to make out Shane bringing his hand up between them and curling down the last two of his fingers. His thumb is cocked like the hammer of a gun and Ryan gasps in understanding when Shane touches the mock barrel to the side of his own head.

“What do you think?” Shane says, and there's absolutely no heat left in him, no evidence of breath, of life. “Think it will work?”

Ryan thinks of imaginary teeth that drew blood. He thinks of the fifty right turns he took in a row today. He thinks of a wooden door appearing and displacing space between a bookshelf and a line of family snapshots. He thinks of all the power he has given this place just by being scared and vows to lie perfectly still when the point of Shane’s finger drags through the air to centre on his forehead.

It’s not real, Ryan thinks, a brand new mantra that feel clumsy in his novice grasp. _It’s not real, it’s not real, it’s not real._

“Why are you doing this?” he asks. “I know this isn’t Shane, this isn’t my friend, so what do you want?” He’s trying not to go cross eyed at the hand so close to his face and his plan is to treat this like every other time he’s tried to talk directly to evil. Being earnest is his weapon and he intends to use it. “What do you get out of tricking us like this?” He feels something warm and wet trickling down past his temples. It cools rapidly as he talks. “You don’t want us to leave so you give us what you think we want, is that it?”

The mock gun gets torn away. It has no power if Ryan doesn’t believe in it. In the flash of shifting light, he sees red has taken over the arm of Shane’s jacket and he knows that the warm and wet on his face was Shane’s blood dripping down from his shoulder and off of the ends of his fingers. That’s fine, it’s the warmest thing about him at this point, like that’s the realest part of Shane fighting its way to the surface, and he’s choosing to find that comforting.

With a sudden growl and something that reeks of desperation, Shane hunches back over him. He kisses Ryan with all the force of a punch and Ryan can’t keep asking questions when there’s a hand on his jaw levering his mouth open. It may not be real but Ryan drinks it in, he lets Shane tilt his head back to get a better angle and nips back when the thing’s teasing nature makes itself known again.

The thing even tastes cold, like the chill of sucking on ice cubes or that tickle in your throat that comes with downing icy water. The shiver that runs through him, when that cold tongue touches his, gives Ryan the perfect cover for tugging Shane closer. It allows him to loop an arm around his neck and it lets him hold onto his shoulder for leverage.

Shane groans into his mouth at the lightest touch to his shoulder. When Ryan uses all of the leverage he has to dig his thumb in hard, Shane screams and writhes.

They part with a slick sound that Ryan begs the camera can’t hear, for both of their future sanity, and pushes and kicks at every piece of Shane that’s touching him. Shane goes easy enough, he’s too busy clutching at his shoulder in pain, his teeth bared, to take notice of Ryan finally crawling free. He escapes into the dark grasp of the hallway with a flurry of limbs, feeling grateful for the first time that it happily swallows him up.

Shane is panting on his hands and knees, heavy clouds of breath building in front of his face, but there’s an alert look in his eyes that wasn’t there before. He’s searching for something, Ryan realises, watching him sweep his hands across the floor, but he can’t seem to find it. “Ryan,” he croaks, not a question but a reminder, and he sounds small and so terrifyingly lost that Ryan can’t help but crawl back out of the dark to reach for him.

The moment Shane’s gaze alights on him, the sheer relief that shows there is enough to tell Ryan that this is real, this is Shane, and that whatever creature had its claws in him is gone. The relief goes beyond bone deep but it doesn’t change anything, not really. They still need to get out of here and he accepts Shane’s outstretched hand, shaking though it is, to channel as much love and forgiveness as he can into a single touch, then uses it to tug him to his feet.

“Ryan,” Shane says again, just as reverent as before, “you okay? You’ve got--” Half way into the motion of pointing out the pattern of drying blood on Ryan’s face, Shane seems to notice the blood crusted between his own fingers and he drops his hand back down with a guilty air. “You’re bleeding, man,” he finishes lamely.

God, Ryan’s waited his whole life to be able to say shit like this and it sucks that now is the only time it works. “It’s not mine,” he says, with just the right amount of chagrin, but it’s wasted here, totally wasted. “Come on,” he says, feeling more and more like himself, now that the intense heat had been leached away from him. And shared out, it seems, judging by the flush colouring Shane's skin. “We’re getting out of here.”

His confidence gets Shane moving. He retrieves both of their flashlights, his discarded jacket and, for all of a second, debates leaving the camera where it is. Shane obviously doesn’t remember sticking his tongue down his throat and Ryan dearly wishes he couldn’t. But he does have a plan to get out of here, and it’s a plan that’s going to feel a lot like digging his hands into Shane’s open wound again. Negative emotion appears to trump positive in here and he’s just going to have to grit his teeth and use that to his advantage. He picks the camera up, in the end, and passes it over to Shane, if only for the goddamn novelty of the truth.

Shane’s stupidly long legs eat up the same distance that Ryan has to jog to cover. He's sporting that kicked dog look again, made worse by the stained red of his hands, and it helps towards his plan that Ryan can't bear to look at him.

There are no more twisting turns being laid out for them, just a long stretch of hallway that rolls past their periphery like a looping backdrop.

“Just tell me I didn’t hurt you,” Shane says. Begs him, really.

Ryan swallows down a very real feeling of revulsion and says cryptically, “It wasn’t you, alright, it was this place.”

For a brief moment, the path ahead of them doesn’t seem so dark, like Ryan has taken it all inside of himself in order to see more clearly.

“But it did something to you, didn’t it?” Shane keeps at it, with all the determination of a man digging his own grave. “And it used me to do it?”

It’s a calculated move that Ryan doesn’t answer and he feels like the biggest piece of shit in the world. He’s thinking so hard about that exit but it doesn’t mean he can’t feel the waves of guilt rolling off of Shane and flooding the hallway. It's enough to make him pick up the pace.

“If it comes back,” Shane’s saying, not seeming to notice that they’re running now, “if it comes back, knock me out. Do whatever it takes, I don’t care. Promise me, alright? Run off and leave me if that's what it takes, Ryan. There's no reason this place gets to take us both.”

There’s more light than dark the further they go. Ryan’s mostly a shadowy black hole of guilt, using Shane’s fear against him like this, but their flashlights are becoming brighter and brighter in their hands until they should be burning them in their intensity. A deep growl starts to build somewhere behind them but it feels so very far away compared to Shane’s voice. Shane's scared and desperately begging voice that's cutting through the dark just as easily as it's cutting through Ryan.

And they’re running. And running. Until suddenly they’re tumbling through a door that swings open under their weight.

The camera skids across a carpeted floor, spins until it finally rests, pointed at a tangle of limbs, framed by row of family pictures and a bookshelf crammed full with books.


End file.
